Draft evaluation question 3

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

The ‘kind’ of media institution required to distribute my product successfully to my designated target audience would be one that provides not only money and channels of distribution, but one that also leaves creative control to the designers and allows the magazine to really stand out on it’s own away from demands or requirements usually set out by distribution companies.

With these requirements, the most promising media institution is most likely ‘COMAG specialist’ (part of COMAG group) due to their focus on ‘niche’ magazines. I believe that this suits my magazine due to the fluid nature of my chosen target audience and the manner at which they so casually dispel genres and artists e.t.c. as soon as they become popular or mainstream. When this happens to items featured in a magazine, a lot of the time the magazine itself also begins to build a growing fan base until it has become popular or mainstream. This is usually desirable as it would see increased sales and value of the magazine, translating into higher profits. But if your aim is not to create a short term, profitable business venture that is quickly forgotten by the music industry but to create a long lasting, constantly evolving product seeking to provide an in depth review of the most obscure and eccentric musical creations then you should not base your success on monetary gains. Instead, the success of this magazine would be based on the long term predictions of trends in music, sometimes years before something would enter the mainstream, especially newly formed genres. To be allowed to judge a media product in this manner, an institution would have to have a lot of trust in the producers of the product in the face of low sales and little influence. I believe that ‘COMAG specialist’ would be one of the few media institutions prepared to ‘play the long game’ and turn down offers of sponsorship or celebrity endorsement (apart from a select few icons) as they would ‘taint’ the brand. The whole reason for things like that being so bad for this particular magazine, is due to the fact that the target audience (scenester) is closely related to the ‘activist’ tribe that will avoid commercial products or services etc. on ethical grounds (i.e not using amazon due to their tax dodging) so it would be too improbable that they boycott a magazine for their association